American Exceptionalism is back: End Prohibition of class A drugs

December 5 I was reading my twitter newsfeed when all of a sudden I saw a news headline on the Washington Post about Rush Limbaugh complaining about American exceptionalism being vanished.

A few hours later, a vintage picture of a man toasting with a cocktail glass popped up in my Facebook newsfeed. 

The headline went "December 5, 1933: Celebrating 81 years since the end of prohibition". 

The Cato Institute decided to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the End of Prohibition with a series of initiatives aimed at evaluating the possibility of ending class A drugs Prohibition and what kind of impact such an action would bring to the American Economy.  

When I read it I was so happy I could not even speak. Immediately my mind went back to Rush Limbaugh's call to bring back America's exceptionalism.

"America is a shining light, a beacon, a guidepost for free people.  America inspires.  America promotes. That's one definition of American exceptional."

America is certainly all this and even more, the problem is that American exceptionalism has been missing for a while now, as America lost huge chunks of consent for being involved in unpopular wars abroad and domestic social tensions increased because of the Economy.

Few people understand that today like never before, Real Leadership means being ahead of social change, where social change means pursuing higher standard of living for society as a whole.

Sometimes business intelligence and social change go hand in hand like in the Cato Institute initiative aimed at understanding the possible implications of ending Prohibition of class A drugs which will definitely reduce major social problems like organized crime and drug abuse while boosting the economy.

According to Mark Thornton: "National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33) the “noble experiment”—was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. The results of that experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts. The evidence affirms sound economic theory, which predicts that prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges is doomed to failure."

It is a fact that Prohibition only raised crime levels, illegal smuggling and alcohol consumption whilst solving absolutely nothing. 

Let's take a look at the facts:

Since Jan. 1, 2014 the state of Colorado has brought in more than $45.2 million in taxes, licenses and fees for recreational and medical marijuana. If all 50 states legalized cannabis today, they'd be collectively raking in more than $3 billion a year in taxes.

In a study just released by the Cato Institute, they estimate the impact of legalization on federal, state, and local budgets. The report concludes that drug legalization would reduce government expenditure about $41.3 billion annually. Roughly $25.7 billion of this savings would accrue to state and local governments, and roughly $15.6 billion to the federal government. About $8.7 billion of the savings would result from legalization of marijuana, $20 billion from legalization of cocaine and heroin, and $12.6 billion from legalization of all other drugs.

Legalization would also generate tax revenue of roughly $46.7 billion annually if drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. About $8.7 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of marijuana, $32.6 billion from legalization of cocaine and heroin, and $5.5 billion from legalization of all other drugs.

Ending class A drugs Prohibition would also lead to a significant reduction of street crime, higher life expectancy, a healthier population and safer streets.

According to the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University Jeffrey Miron and NYU Stern School of Business Finance Prof. Katherine Waldock "Legalization would have many effects, and opinions differ on whether these are desirable on net. Legalization will not solve America’s fiscal woes; the budget effects are small in comparison with current deficits. Yet the budgetary benefits are more than mere rounding error; for those with mixed feelings about prohibition vs. legalization, these benefits might be a deciding factor."

"Roughly half the budgetary savings comes from reduced criminal-justice expenditure on drug prohibition. For this component of the effect to show up in government budgets, policymakers would have to lay off police, prosecutors, prison guards, and the like. Reduced expenditure on enforcing prohibition can still be beneficial if those criminal-justice resources are redeployed to better uses, but that outcome is not easy to achieve."

All signs say that time has come to end class A drugs prohibition but in order to take such a decision we need Americans to stick together and wholly support such an intelligent, enlightened and long-sighted measure.

In that interview to the Wash Post, Rush Limbaugh was complaining about America not being exceptional anymore. The Cato Institute proposal is the shine at the end of the tunnel.  It took less than 24 hours to respond to Limbaugh's call. This is just to show you how easy policymaking can be when Business Intelligence and Common Sense work together.

Two months ago, the German Government scrapped tuition fees for all universities and the offer was extended to foreign students, including Americans.

Offering tuition-free college to Foreign students is certainly a great initiative that put Germany on top of the world leadership but ending Prohibition would have a planetary impact as for our civilization it would mean entering a new era of Peace and Prosperity on a global scale.

As its first direct consequence ending Prohibition would be a lethal blow to Organized Crime on our planet. Think to those drug cartels that kill thousands of people every year that all of a sudden will be laid off thanks to drug legalization in the U.S.

A UN report shows that in 2009 the global drug trade generated an estimated US$ 1.3 trillion. With a world GDP of US$36 trillion in the same year. $36 trillion that would become part of the American GDP.

Such an enlightened decision will bring wealth and health for generations to come. Implications of ending Prohibition are of stellar magnitude in terms of Evolution for our Civilization and whoever would lead the way to such an objective will achieve Eternity. No question about it.

If the Cato Institute will manage to convince  Policy Makers to end Prohibition, that would allow our planet to make a light-year jump foward into the future. A future that America and the world have been craving for the past hundred years. We need the Cato Institute to keep this initiative alive with all of their strength because there's the most invaluable thing at stake: our future.

While achieving such an enormous accomplishment America would get back its exceptionalism while giving the world a lesson on how real leadership works and who's in charge of the show.

E Pluribus Unum

Gianluca D'Agostino

Has Germany declared War to the United States of America?

Ten days ago, the government of Germany announced that "all German universities are now free to Americans and all other international students".

This sensational announcement was perceived as a major shift in social policy and October 10 President Obama made a statement over the urgency to make college more affordable for millennials.

Although the main problem is American Universities are mostly private organizations and they won't be able to compete with the German offer of tuition-free University.

As a matter of fact the German initiative of tuition-free University for students from all over the world is a direct blow to the American trickle-down economy system, where even the minimum wage is still considered a taboo.

Today America is being dragged into  the world championship of welfare initiatives where the top teams are represented by North European countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway and now Germany whose offer of tuition-free college is a direct threat to the very basics of America's traditional anti-government flag represented by the trickle-down economics.

As a matter of fact this is today's global war and America has been hit on its cultural identity because in terms of public consent the German offer of free tuition for American students can be considered like the Pearl Harbor not only of the trickle-down economics but of the libertarian vision as a whole.

How dares Germany offer tuition-free college to American students?

A conspiracy theorist would speculate that a lot of young Americans every day are willing to join the armed forces to get a University degree as that's one of the main reasons that lead thousands of Americans to join the military. The question that follows is this: is it possible that Germany's move is aimed at draining the United States Army of its military personnel?

I think this could be a solid argument to dismiss the German's initiative of tuition-free college and see it as a major conspiracy to drain the US military of its human capital.

Will the young Americans be more attracted by the German tuition-free offer or will they choose to join the combat zone to get their deserved degree? This is the trillion dollar question whose answer will reveal the world where real leadership stands.

We have to understand that the future of humankind is obviously towards the German model of free tuition rather than the private model based on the burdening student's loan. You can tell it by simply taking a look at the data as the loan system not only is not working but in the long term is going to destroy the American economy.

According to Forbes, Student loan debt has topped $1 trillion as two-thirds of students graduate with debt. There are nearly 37 million student loan borrowers in the United States currently repaying a student loan, according to the Fed.

It’s not just the young 20-something crowd that’s burdened with the debt. Over 60% of that the $1 trillion is held by those over 30-years-old, 15% is held by those over 50.

By making it easier to borrow money for higher education - the US government saddled more than one generation with crushing debts and inflating a bubble that could bring down the whole economy.

Here I would like to remind a sentence by President George W. Bush who used to say "access is power" that means if you make things more accessible you are empowering people.

The German leadership aims at empowering not only its own people but foreign students too and in my book, empowering people is the main task of any given leadership in the Universe that wants to be called as such.

The few media reactions to the German offer were just a bunch of rambling propaganda articles against Germany and its present leadership coming from the usual media outlets.

In fact those articles only tried to smear the current German leadership with a series of unspecified problems that will potentially affect the German economy in the future.

Then yesterday we read this news that the German Intelligence blamed pro-russians separatists for the downing of the Malaysian airlines MH17 but no German government official followed up to confirm the story.

Although on October 18 we learned that German journalist and editor Udo Ulfkotte was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, adding that noncompliance ran the risk of being fired.

After such a revelation, the news clearly shows that a major underground conflict is going on between Germany and the U.S. and it's being fought through government-social reforms versus a perception management campaign.

If we look at this picture it seems that the real enemy of the United States is much more Germany rather than Russia.

Russia never offered tuition-free college to American students and it never announced to shut down its nuclear facilities by 2020.

Compared to Germany, the U.S. energy policy seems to go the opposite way: the current administration is  engaging in extensive atomic rebuilding by planning to invest $1 trillion in nuclear weapons.

Being this the situation, America will definitely struggle to keep up with Germany in the war for public consent.  

Unfortunately public consent today only rewards those leaders who show they care for people's real needs. How do you show you care? first by lowering social conflicts, wars, environment pollution and the poverty gap. People tend to notice these things, especially in today's world where news are globally and instantly available.

If public consent is today's warfare the trickle-down economics is the perfect self-destruction device.

The crucial question here is "can America change its libertarian approach and join the war for public consent on the social protection battlefield?"  I am not sure I can answer this question but America is famous for being totally unpredictable.

The  real problem here is that Germany is one of the richest countries in the world where unemployment is at 5% and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the country’s most popular politician ever as in a poll made this month, 79% thought she's doing a great job, a number that her American, British or French counterparts can only dream of.

If we take a look at Angela Merkel's agenda and what she was able to accomplish with her government, the only possible comment is contemplative silence. Why? well among the many things she accomplished there are pension increases, the raise of the national minimum wage to €8.50, the rent controls, the commitment to shut down nuclear facilities by 2020 and now the tuition free University for foreign students.

In a world made of media, what's at stake is public consent. How do you conquer public consent?
The most effective warfare are social protection measures and these series of initiatives taken by the German government represent nothing less than "fatal blows" aimed at no one but America.

On the other side America never showed a particular attitude towards social reforms and public welfare with the exception of President Obama's healthcare reform which has been under attack by both sides of the aisle since its very debut back in 2008.

The thing is America is not prepared to face such kind of warfare because social welfare is the weakest side of the trickle-down kingdom.

Tuition-free College? Are you kiddin' me?

Deutschland Uber Alles

Ebola panic sparked by BBC based on a non-scientific publication

                                  "Summer Blockbuster" by American Artist Sean O.Wabich; Ink on Paper 

                                   70x100 cm: 2014

40 years ago the BBC was credited as one of the most reliable media in the world. 

Unfortunately in the past few years we have been witnessing a higher level of public tolerance towards inaccuracy by the mainstream media. Maybe this is happening since former Prime Minister Tony Blair lied to the British people over the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I think that was a major shift in terms of government credibility and I am deeply convinced British PM David Cameron was absolutely right when he said "Tony Blair poisoned the well of public trust". 

However Britain easily recovered its historical prestige when 11 months ago the British parliament rejected a possible UK military strike against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to deter the use of chemical weapons.

There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again!'"

It seems the same saying is pretty well known in Britain too and the British usually put their sayings into practice. 

Although here it seems that the well of public trust in Britain is still under a major contamination threat because an important British institution like the BBC, in 2012 published the following article on the Ebola virus being "airborne".

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423


This article published by BBC two years ago, is now being used as the main reference by many media outlets and private citizens to spread fear and panic over the current Ebola outbreak occurring in West Africa.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423

The article intro says: "Canadian scientists have shown that the deadliest form of the ebola virus could be transmitted by air between species".

The only problem with this claim is that the "Canadian Study" upon which the BBC alarming news was based comes from a non-scientific publication.

I repeat it once again because my English maybe contaminated by the Italian language, being myself Italian:

THE CANADIAN STUDY IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC STUDY.

In fact the only publication that reported the Canadian Study was "Scientific Reports" a non-scientific publication hosted on the Nature.com domain.

A top representative from the Scientific Community advised me that "Scientific Reports editorial policy is the acceptance of papers that ensure suitability to experimental science".

In practice he advised me not to rely on such a publication for any scientific purpose. Hence this study which is known since 2012 as "the Canadian Study" has never been included or re-published by any serious scientific publication.

In practice, the Canadian Study cannot be considered scientific and consequently no serious media should rely on what it claims, especially to alarm the world's population.

The Immunology Professor told me explicitly about the Canadian Study: "you are asking me to make a comment over a non-scientific publication, what are we talking about here? you already got your answer!"

I understand that the man on the street can be easily misguided by such a publication being hosted on the nature.com domain, but the BBC is not run by the man on the street, or at least that's what I thought before reading that story.

However, among the mainstream media you have to make a distinction, because yesterday, after we published our article that dismissed the Canadian Study being "scientific", CNN immediately changed its headline from "Ebola coming to U.S." to  "2 Americans infected with Ebola in Liberia coming to Atlanta hospital"  

To be perfectly honest that change was the result of a joint effort, as after I have published the article, a Ph.D Student in Virology, Stephen Goldstein told CNN Correspondant Jim Clancy that the CNN headline "Ebola coming to U.S." was too inflammatory.

Jim Clancy informed the CNN Senior Writer who changed the headline. Team work always works. This is a lesson we should always keep in mind: Each part must do its part, which is perfectly summarized by the motto: E Pluribus Unum.

Instead here it seems that the BBC motto is "Be the last to know" or at least the last to acknowledge not only what goes on but the fact that as long as that article is On-line, the BBC reputation is sinking down to the toilet. 

For no apparent reason the BBC seems to rely on sensationalism while what is really happening is they are self-destroying their own historical reputation by admitting they're not able to distinguish a scientific study from a non-scientific one.

The role of the media is to inform the public, hence as I have been taught while working at CNN: "Accuracy is key". 

E Pluribus Unum,

Gianluca D'Agostino

@giallucad

Gianluca D'Agostino worked for CNN in Washington DC and for Associated Press in Rome and Tirana. D'Agostino holds a Ph.d in Theory of Information and Communication and worked as Researcher at the Department of English at Stanford University.

Personal Blog:. http://gldnws.blogspot.it/

Is the Mainstream Media the real Ebola?

                          "Summer Blockbuster" by American Artist Sean O.Wabich; Ink on Paper 70x100 cm

UPDATE: After we published this article, CNN changed its headline from "Ebola coming to U.S." TO "2 Americans infected with Ebola in Liberia coming to Atlanta hospital" We want to thank for this Stephen Goldstein who is a Ph.D student in Virology and Jim Clancy, CNN Correspondant & Anchor.

The only existing research that claims that the Ebola virus is airborne is the so called "Canadian Study" made by a group of Researchers at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg which was published on 2012.

That's the study upon which the whole fearmongering campaign about Ebola was based.

Although what the majority of readers ignore is that the study was never acknowledged by the scientific community. 

The only publication that reported the Canadian Study was "Scientific Reports" a non-scientific publication hosted on the Nature.com domain. Scientific Reports received the Canadian paper on April 2012 and published it on November 2012.

That's why is very easy to spread panic through the media on the Ebola virus: being a complex topic that requires a scientific background, the man on the street can only rely on what the media say.

It seemed to me that in the past few months the MSM (Mainstream Media) have been getting much uglier with their low-rent strategies. It seems they still think to live during the television-era when people were used to buy whatever they sold, but that time is well over.

We are in the Age of Sharing now, or the Time of Consciousness if you like. Although human beings, in particular terrestrials are a very combative species who love to persist in their sociopath behavior.

In the past few weeks we have been reading very depressive news: From Ukraine to Gaza, conflict escalation and casualties completely filled their headlines. 

Then miraculously, an Ebola outbreak threatens to come to our neighborhood, just like the Thriller intro voice-over by the late Vincent Price who was the undisputed king of the horror genre.

But this is not a music video, we are talking about News Media announcing a massive epidemic of a deadly hemorragic fever which according to the mainstream media was ready to come to our neighborhood to visit us with the next flight from West Africa. 

Like in the best disinformation tradition, in order to be trusted news media must report the source of their news-information. When it comes to a deadly virus like Ebola you must cite a scientific study that provides substantial evidence to your story.

All the media reports showed below they all based their alarming headlines on the Canadian Study, a non-scientific study made by a group of Canadian Researchers at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Although being "Scientific Reports" a non-scientific blog hosted on the Nature.com domain, average people might get confused. But if you are an Immunology Professor you know the difference between scientific and non-scientific and that's why we are here to report  to our readers what really happened.

What is really astonishing is that in the frontline of Disinformation we have nothing less than the BBC:

You have to be aware that most of the people just read headlines without reading the whole story, hence if 90% of the people only read the headlines, your disinformation mission can be considered accomplished.

Although if you read this article to the very end of it, you will find an italic written statement that says as follow: 

Disclaimer

All content within this column is provided for general information only, and should not be treated as a substitute for the medical advice of your own doctor or any other health care professional. The BBC is not responsible or liable for any diagnosis made by a user based on the content of this site. The BBC is not liable for the contents of any external internet sites listed, nor does it endorse any commercial product or service mentioned or advised on any of the sites. Always consult your own GP if you're in any way concerned about your health.

This is another story, always by the BBC, which is still On-line by the way, written by a guy named Matt Mc Grath, who claims that there is a growing concern over "in the air " transmission of Ebola. 

The fact that the virus was not airborne was already out in the market, because Vox News released an interview with Prof. Art Reingold, the head of Epidemiology at UC Berkeley's School of  Public Health.

Prof. Reingold is a disease epidemiologist who has spent the last 30 years studying the prevention and control of infectious diseases around the world. 

According to Prof. Reingold: 

"People should not be concerned about Ebola spreading to the US or other wealthy countries. It's transmitted entirely through exposure to bodily fluids. In settings with Ebola, there's bleeding in a variety of places and the virus is present in those excretions, and people need to come into contact with that to get the virus. The people at risk are the family members who are taking care of sick people, those who are preparing bodies for burial, and health-care workers."

Nonetheless the mainstream media went on with their fearmongering tactics: 

Please take notice that this magazine's name is: "Scientific American Magazine"

After such a massive flow of disinformation was hitting the news market I immediately decided to respond by inquiring the World Health Organization on the matter. 

And they released this statement:

In the meanwhile I spoke to Professor Antonella d'Arminio Monforte who is the Head of the Division of Tropical and Infectious Diseases at the San Paolo University. 

By the way, when I talked to Professor D'Arminio she was at the Airport in the process of boarding a flight to Africa to spend her vacation holiday there. That says all on the danger of this African virus......

She confirmed the WHO position that the Ebola virus is not airborne. 

Although the question is still up: Why the media did not check the study was a non-scientific work?

A possible answer is they might have been misled by the fact that Scientific Reports is a publication hosted by the nature.com domain.  

According to Nature's website, "Scientific Reports is a publication hosted on nature.com — the home of over 80 journals published by Nature Publishing Group — Scientific Reports is open to all, publishing technically sound, original research papers of interest to specialists within their field, without barriers to access."

A representative from the Scientific Community advised me that "Scientific Reports editorial policy is the acceptance of papers that ensure the suitability to experimental science".

Iin practice he advised me not to rely on such a publication for any scientific purpose. Hence this study which is known since 2012 as "the Canadian Study" has never been included or re-published by any serious scientific publication. Hence the Canadian Study cannot be considered a scientific study. In particular, the media cannot rely on this study to alarm the world's population.

However the problem stays, because what happened with this fearmongering propaganda demonstrates that the establishment that drives the fear machine can count on the complicity of pseudo-scientific publications which are hosted on major scientific media outlet like Nature, the Telegraph, The BBC, The Scientific American and many others. 

Like in the Edward Snowden's case, the whole media system immediately agreed to trust the fact that Edward Snowden was/is a real leaker. We are assisting to the same comedy show: the mainstream media spreading terror to the world's population with false information and without having a single scientific evidence that the virus is airborne, quiet the contrary.

E Pluribus Unum

Greenwald's proscription list put the word end to Snowden's comedy show

Writing another piece on the odd couple Snowden and Greenwald is like taking out the trash at night.

You want to procrastinate that moment as long as you can and maybe the trash will magically vanish by itself.

The problem is I can easily forget about both of them but unfortunately there are people out there who still think that Snowden is a real leaker and Greenwall a real journalist.

I didn't use the word "trash" by chance, the whole Snowden story is a giant pile of trash, a trashy show that was staged  the old way by the same old production which finds no other place in today's conscious world than in a dumpster. 

The latest episode of the saga is called "proscription list".

In ancient Rome, the proscription list was a posted notice listing Roman citizens who had been declared outlaws and whose goods were confiscated. Rewards were offered to anyone killing or betraying the proscribed, and severe penalties were inflicted on anyone harbouring them. 

Their properties were confiscated, and their sons and grandsons were forever barred from public office and from the Senate.

In more recent times, the most famous proscription list is the one that Adolf Hitler published before the invasion of Poland  that identified more than 61,000 members of Polish elites: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, and others, who were to be interned or shot. 

Making a list of citizens who are not welcomed by a government or any other institution is a typical tool of every respectful dictatorship

People tend to forget that Steven Spielberg' "Schindler's List" is the story of the Jewish Holocaust that was possible only thanks to the proscription lists.

As a matter of fact in Schindler's list opening scene you see a bunch of nazis registering people's names on their typewriting machines, that's why the typewriting machine became the symbol of the Holocaust, because it was the main tool used by the nazis to perform a mass killing like a typical office duty. 

Lists and typewriters are the symbol of the bureaucratic killing machine to give the audience the idea of a system of cold, mighty hierarchical power. 

June 1 2014, Glenn-I-know-real-leakers-Greenwald takes on Nazi style and announces he has a 'list' of NSA-targeted US dissidents but when he's being asked by American Journalist Naomi Wolf to publish the proscription list he tweets her back that he has some unspecified "Privacy Concern" and he wants to respect the people's privacy.

Privacy???? Keeping secret a list of names of people labelled as "dissidents" by the US Government? Where's Mr. Greenwald's quest for freedom? Eventually Greenwald's tweet has been deleted. I wonder why.

First of all if the United States Government would publish such a list that will be the end of Democracy as we know it and the end of the United States reputation as the Land of Freedom.

Second of all, by simmering the release of a proscription list Glenn-I-know-real-leakers Greenwald would be the main accomplice of a fearmongering campaign to devastate the lives of those millions who might even slightly think they could be in that list.

Where all this could possibly lead us to?

As I have been affirming in my first review of the Snowden show back in September 2013, Gleen Greenwald is just a bookkeeper, he's the employee of the year who does his homework as soon as he's being asked for by his owners.

He can be compared to French Lawyer Joseph Haennig, who during the French Nazi regime of Vichy, published an article to enlarge the boundaries of the concept of Jewishness so that more people could have been deported and killed in concentration camps.

According to Prof. Richard Weisberg who studied the Vichy lawyers more in depth than anyone on this planet, Vichy lawyers, thanks to their interpretational skills, they ingrained ability to avoid the conflict between the racial laws and the foundational egalitarianism of traditional French Constitutional Law.

Mr Greenwald, who not by chance is a Lawyer, is the perfect reincarnation of Joseph Haenning's sociopath attitude. He is being paid to play the slave of a fearmongering show, whose only objective since day one was to terrorize independent journalists to go on writing because they were under surveillance.

Mr. Greenwald perfectly knows that proscription lists are themselves not only illegal but ethically and morally unacceptable because they belong to Nazi Germany "best practices" and the United States Government doesn't like to be identified like "the Nazi Regime" because it doesn't reflect the most basic values upon which America has been founded. 

And no lawyer on planet earth would be able to avoid the conflict between the US Constitution and a proscription list. More in deep no lawyer on this planet would even give such a legal abomination a try unless he wants to be crucified at the Lincoln memorial.

Hence by simmering the release of such a science-fictional list of names shows a clear will  to bring the campaign of terror started by Snowden on mass surveillance to a higher level. To its highest level. To its brinkmanship. 

The real question is why the screenplay is taking such an unexpected turninig point? 

Well, that's because the Snowden show was a total bomb at the box office and it didn't receive that amazing feedback its producers were expecting from it.

As a matter of fact, American Journalist Naomi Wolf, started to question the reliability of Snowden right after it premiered on the lamestream media one year ago.

The problem is that if a list of such kind had existed it would have had Naomi Wolf's name on top of it. Although such a move would have meant that the whole Snowden show was a giant fake as it is. Hence even if such a list would exist it could have never ever been published because it would be a lethal self-inflicting blow for the Snowden comedy show.

Unfortunately for Mr. Greenwald not everyone on this planet has his/her brain fried by the mainstream media which he wonderfully represents. Some of us have a weakness for history, that in the era of  Consciousness, the one we are living now, is a combination of past present and future combined together. The problem is these amateurs like Greenwald and Snowden completely ignore the fact that in the era of Consciousness there's no difference between past and present, it's all one. 

Moreover there is no list of dissidents because that would immediately identify the United States Government like the Germany of 1933 which is against the very meaning of Freedom upon which America was founded.

Being a Lawyer Mr. Greenwald should know these things because here we talk about the very basics. 

If Mr. Greenwald ignores such basics there are only two options left: 

1) he's the worst lawyer and the worst journalist and the worst American citizen ever

 or 

2) he willingly CHOSE to ignore these facts.Which is much more probable unless Mr. Greenwald wants to be identified as a mentally disabled person.

I think this is the moment in which a real journalist should tell his readers "You decide". 

Whoever made up this giant fake show of Snowden and Greenwald is just an amateur. We entered the era of global Consciousness and staging a fake leaking show only to spread fear and terror like if we were in the Middle Ages is simply pathetic. Next time you want to set up a show to a world audience you'll have to hire real professionals, people whose area of expertise is global consciousness, otherwise the only effect you are going to produce is boredom and pity for those poor actors whose acting skills and reputation is now completely destroyed. 

I think the casting director chose Snowden as the main character because of his physical appearance because he might look like a creepy nerdy spy, but real spies don't look like Snowden, exactly like

real journalists don't look like Greenwald. 

These people are just very low-rent actors, who were hired to play a pathetic show to spread fearmongering propaganda over an hypothetic global surveillance system and that's the beginning and the end of their circle of revelations: a bunch of hot air and a lot of stone age fearmongering propaganda. "You guys are spied on a 24/7 basis".

There are 7 billion people on this planet. If you have to spy on 7 billion people you need 35 million employees because to spy on one person you need at least 5 people (two surveillance operators who actually spy on the subject, an analyst who compares the data, a psychologist who connects the dots and a supervisor who checks the whole process)

The game is over Mr. Greenwald and you will go down in history as the employee of the year.

E Pluribus Unum

Italy's Curse: The Lust for Revenge

Only a week after former US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner revealed in his book that back in 2011 EU officials approached him with a plan to overthrow Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s elected leader, another assumed "international plot" has been revealed by the leader of Italy’s Five Star Movement, Gianroberto Caseleggio:

(the text reported below is an abstract from a video interview to Mr. Casaleggio conducted by Il fatto Quotidiano Editor Marco Travaglio)

"It was April 10, 2013, a week before Italy's Presidential Elections. I was with Mr. Grillo (The Five Star Movement leader) and two of our staff members.

The British Ambassador asked us if we would like to meet Enrico Letta, who at the time was Vice-Secretary of the Democratic Party and who was waiting in the next room. 

We turned down the offer. 

Eventually we were taken upstairs via a backstair to have lunch with some of the Embassy staff while the Ambassador was having lunch with Mr. Letta downstairs. 

At one point the Ambassador (rather his right-hand man) asked us: "What do you think of the re-election of Mr. Napolitano? (The incumbent President of the Republic) 

Two weeks later Napolitano was re-elected President and Mr. Letta was named Prime Minister. We reached the conclusion that there was something wrong in all this . . .

It proves the strong influence that foreign governments have on Italy's political choices. 

It's not just Germany. It's one of the many faces of our total loss of sovereignty: we lost territorial sovereignity in 1945; we lost monetary sovereignty with the Euro and the fiscal sovereignty with the fiscal compact. In order to win the elections we should win the elections in at least three foreign countries...."

Italians tend too easily to forget that from 1923 to 1943 Italy was ruled by a ferocious fascist dictatorship which was Hitler's first ally.

Much has been said about the existence of secret treaties that would see the World War II winners as Italy's democracy supervisors but like every conspiracy theory there is no conclusive evidence that such treaties do exist.  

Even if that were the case, you have to see the situation within the setting of 1943, when Italy was completely devastated by 20 years of gruesome dictatorship that has no comparison in today's world. 

Besides, on the occasion mentioned above, the British Ambassador merely provided help as mediator between two major political forces who wouldn't even talk to each other otherwise. 

As a matter of fact this is the real Italian problem:  Resentment. 

Nonetheless, since this is a major structural problem that has affected Italian society since the dawn of time, political leaders tend to exaggerate International conspiracies as an excuse to avoid such a hot topic.

Politicians in Italy do not talk to each other because they see each other not as adversaries but as enemies.  

Resentment in Italy is the real engine that moves Italy's politics forward. 

To make yourself an idea, take Richard Nixon's enemy list attitude and multiply it by a thousand, and you're still nowhere near it. You have to imagine a country of politicians who have no political adversaries but enemies.

Where all this hatred comes from?

Well my idea is that it's a combination of several factors that piled up along the past seventy years. 

The Fosse Ardeatine massacre can be probably considered as the major inciting incident of this chain of hatred as it's still an open wound even in today's Italy. 

The Fosse Ardeatine was a mass killing carried out in Rome on 24 March 1944 by German occupation troops during the Second World War as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted on the previous day in central Rome against the SS Police Regiment Bozen.

This is probably the possible inciting incident for which left and right used as their favorite blame game, which started and fuelled a series of retaliation events which have been keeping Italians divided between left and right since the last world war (which was also Italy's civil war) and that lasted for seventy years because that "original sin" transformed itself along the way assuming different forms that made people forget the very reason why they kept blaming and hating each other.

Since then, resentment in Italy perpetuated through time. generation after generation. 

Still at today you can see Millennials who claim to be "fascist" or "communist". 

Italy's politics not only was absolutely unable to understand or contain this huge wave of resentment and hatred that sparked across the country for the past 70 years, not only they did absolutely nothing to cool it down but Italian political parties actually exploited such negative feelings for parochial interests with the only result of dividing Italian society even more. 

Leftist politicians reminded their voters of the Fosse Ardeatine, Right Wing politicians recalled Stalin's purges while Italians were in the middle of this storm that only aimed to harvest more hate among the very same people: neighbors, relatives, friends were pulled to keep each other away because of different political affiliation. 

You have to consider other relevant historical factors that helped keeping up these divisions: During the Cold War Italy was the battlefield of the two superpowers because of its strategical position in the Mediterranean sea. Although the Cold War ended in 1989 and since then we saw no political leader who acted as Peacemaker between the two factions that kept hating each other for whatever reason that piled up along the way. 

The main problem with a negative feeling like hate is that it transforms itself along the way. As a matter of fact left and right parties are almost the same in today's political arena as last century ideological stances have completely vanished like snow in the sun but hatred stays on as it flows throughout a giant invisible system of communicating vases. 

You want to take a look at it? Just tune yourself into any of Italy's political debates, you'll see people screaming at each other for the whole time and that's not folklore. It's gratuitous baseless hatred. I would like to pop up in any of these pathetic public shows just to say: "wake up! war is over since 1943." Unfortunately, Italian tv networks are so primitive they still base their concept of audience development upon physical altercation. Hence no peace talk in sight. 

A famous Italian sentence which still at today is used in convivial occasions is "let's not talk about politics if we want to stay friends". Like if politics would carry with it a sort of unspeakable gloomy curse. 

I would like to remind here the words of one of the greatest mentors I had to chance to have in my academic career and that's Professor Richard Weisberg from Yeshiva University whose work was the subject of my JD final thesis.

Professor Weisberg is the leading figure of a movement called Law & Literature, a literary stream that sees the participation of some of the major legal figures of our times, like Judge Richard Posner and Dr. Robin West. 

Law & Literature explores the connection between revenge, resentment and Law along the course of human history and according to Professor Weisberg "the resented legal professional can make more damage than an atomic bomb". That is to say that the negative energy or "ressentiment" that has been fuelling Italy's politics in the past 70 years has to be overcome or definetely abandoned by the Italian people if they want to enter a real Consciousness Shift or if they expect any change to happen, otherwise they will be facing the same c(o)urse of the past.

Being this the situation I think we have to say thank you to the British Ambassador for trying to provide our ressented political leaders with some of his communication wisdom. Otherwise, being the 5 stars considered by the Democratic Party a protest movement while the Democratic Party being seen as affiliated with the establishment by the other, no compromise would have been possible without a foreign facilitator.   

We have to consider that Democracy of sorts had existed in England for centuries - as far back as 1432, while Italy became a democracy on June 2 1946.  

Britain never lost a war while Italy lost two. I think you have to consider these things when you talk to someone who represents a country with such a respectable reputation and whose only objective is to help your political leaders simply to talk each other. 

@giallucad 

EXCLUSIVE: How did planet destroyer David Koch get invited at Windsor Castle?

"Climate change sceptics are 'headless chickens', said Prince Charles on January 30 2014, accusing "powerful groups of deniers" of engaging in intimidation.

When it's about being “powerful deniers,” nobody is second to the Koch Brothers; and Prince Charles was talking to the Koch Brothers when he spoke at the Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize Event.

Hence the real mystery here is "why in the world was Mr. David Koch invited to attend a charity dinner for The Royal Marsden Hospital at Windsor Castle?"

There could be different answers indeed:  the dinner was sponsored by Ralph Lauren, so maybe he's the one who invited Mr. Polluter. Although, if I were Mr. Ralph Lauren's Marketing Consultant I would have warmly discouraged the invitation of such "an uncomfortable guest.”

Of course the invitations were managed by the Ralph Lauren staff and maybe those P.R. people down at Ralph Lauren HQ aren't aware of the Antarctic melting situation our planet is undergoing. Maybe on doomsday they would be sitting in the front row at their favorite fashion week's runway. Who knows? Remember the Titanic Orchestra?

The good thing is that the Duchess of Cambridge wasn't there and we don't believe in coincidences.

Because if she had attended the dinner, the Duchess would have had to sit next to Mr. Koch.

Here I think it would be appropriate to recall a quote from Shakespeare in Love: "The Queen of England does not attend exhibitions of public lewdness."

Another coincidence was that Mr. David Koch and his wife weren't portrayed in ANY of the official pictures released to the press. 

At the end of the day, those people at Ralph Lauren were quite lucky, to say the least, but also they did not consider the fact that you don't need a picture to write a story, because the Daily Mail reported the presence of Mr. Koch.

A second possible explanation of the Koch's invitation is that David Koch is suffering from prostate cancer and has donated millions to cancer research institutions and is a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board. Nonetheless, the Koch Industries’ subsidiary Georgia-Pacific is actively working to downplay the dangers of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen.

In the end we completely understand that the cancer research needs to be funded. The problem here is that the individual invited to be involved by Ralph Lauren can be compared to a mass murderer as I can't find another title for someone who invested more than $1 billion to enforce the Climate Change deniers while Antarctica is melting down at light speed. Here we are talking about our planet and the survival of our civilization. In practice David Koch is like those dark characters of the James Bond movies whose objective is destroying the world, with the exception that the one we are living is not a movie but a real nightmarish disaster.

Would you invite such a sociopath to your charity dinner?

As a matter of fact if we look at David Koch's resume, his presence at Windsor Castle must be considered at least "inappropriate" to speak euphemistically:

The Political Economy Research Institute ranks Koch Industries as the tenth worst air polluter in the U.S. in their Toxic Release Inventory.  

CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) reports that Koch releases about 200,000 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide annually.

Koch Industries has a long record [PDF] of environmental crimes and violations, including, but not limited to:

• A $1.7 million fine by the EPA and $500 million commitment to correct pollution violations in seven                states

• Millions of gallons of spilled oil from Koch pipelines throughout the past decade

• A $25 million settlement with the U.S. government in 2001 after falsifying extraction records for oil                collected on Native American and federal land

• A $20 million settlement in 2000 for falsifying documents relating to a major release of the carcinogen           benzene

• A 1996 explosion that killed two teenagers due to a leaking Koch gas pipeline

Through Koch Industries and their family foundations, the Koch brothers are premier financiers to organizations that deny, question or belittle the significance of global warming.  

Compared to ExxonMobil, which spent $10.2 million on skeptic groups from 2005-2008, Koch Industries dwarfed their contribution with a $31.6 million effort. (Source: GreenPeace)

Koch Industries was the 2011 inductee for Corporate Accountability International's Corporate Hall of Shame for "spending over $50 million to fund climate change denial and influencing the Supreme Court's decision to allow unlimited corporate dollars to flow into federal elections." Koch Industries is the sixth member of the Hall of Shame, after Monsanto, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Blackwater and Halliburton.

Koch worked behind the scenes during the 2010 “Rally for Jobs” astroturf events, coordinated by the American Petroleum Institute in order to create political pressure against clean energy and climate legislation in the interest of the oil and gas industry.  Groups such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which are both heavily funded by the Koch brothers and founded by David Koch, were partner organizations in promoting the rallies.

Koch Industries spent $1 million to promote California Proposition 23, intended to undermine the states clean energy and climate law, through subsidiary company Flint Hills Resources.  Koch also pushed Prop 23 through one of their beneficiary front groups, the Pacific Research Institute, which published and promoted reports that made favorable economic arguments for Prop 23 using flawed methodologies.

The Koch brothers have been identified as the major supporters of a secretive conservative funding group, Donors Trust. In 2013, it was revealed that Donors Trust is the biggest financier of climate denier groups in the world. According to The Guardian newspaper, Donors Trust, thanks to anonymous donations from the Kochs and others, dispersed nearly $120 million funding to climate denial groups between 2002 and 2010.

Without mentioning the fact that the Koch brothers are the main sponsors of the Tea Party, an organization that aims at dismantling every single piece of legislation that supports the welfare system, including the minimum wage and free healthcare for veterans.  

How these people can be considered "guests of honor" at Windsor Castle remains a mystery.

E Pluribus Unum